The Brookhaven leader., 1887-05-12

Huobluk " buNh hS ANbhEh W BNo" NAo
scalp from the skull, licking: My
braini my brainr'
Oh, stand off from thatl Why will
you go sounding your way amid the reefs
and warning buoys, when there il such d
vast ocean in which you may voyage, all
sail seti
There is enc other thing I shall say this
morning before leave YOU, whether you
want to hear it or net That Is, that con
slider the lesciyious rhetorical literature
OF the day as most tremendous fer -rih.
There is no one who rar like good pict-
ures better than 1 do. The quickest and
most condensed way of impressing the
public mind is by pictures. What tho
painter does by his brush for a few favor.
tics Inc cugravCr docs by his knife for the
million. What the author aCcomplishes
by fifty pages the artist does by flash.
The Best part of a painting that costs SO.
COl you may buy for ten cents Fine
paintings belong TO the arIstocracy Of art.
EuRrnvinES belong TO the democracy or
AIT. You do well to gather good pictures
in YOU homes. Spread them before your
children after thu tea hour is past
and tho evening circle is gathered.
Throw them on the invals's couch.
Strew them through the rail train 10
cheer the traveller IN his journey. Tack
them On 'hc wall of the nursery. Gather
them in albums and portfolios. God
spCel the good pictures on their way
with ministries of knowledge ana mercy.
But what shall | say of the prostitution
of this art to purposes of iniq uityi These
dCath-warrants of the soul are at every
street corner. They amte the vision OF
the young man with pollution. Many a
young man buying copy has bought his
eternal discontinue. There may be
enough poison In one bad picture to pois-
on one soul, and that soul may poison ten,
and ten fifty, and the fifty hundreds,
and the hundreds thousands, until
nothing but the measuring line of etern-
ty can tell the height, and depth and
ghastliness, and horror of the great un.
doing. The work of death that the wick
ed author does in a whole book the bad
cngraver may do on half side of picto-
rial.
Under the guise ofpure mirth the young
man buys one of these sheets. He unrolls
il before his comrades amid roars of
laughter, but long after the paper is gone
the result may perhaps be seen in the
blasted imagiuations of those who saw it.
The Queen of Death holds banquet every
night, and these periodicals are the
prInte invitations to her guests. Alas,
that the falr brow of American art should
be blotched with this plague spot, and
that philanthropists, bothering them
selrce about smaller evils, should lift up
no united and vehement voice against this
great calamity.
Young man, buy not this moral strych-
nine for your soul. Pick not up this nest
of coilcd ladders for your pocket. Patron
ize no newsstand that keeps them. Have
Your room bright with good epgravings,
bnt for these outrageous pictorials have
not one wall, not one bureau, not one
pocket A man is no better than the pct-
ure he loves TO look at. If your eyes are
not pure, your heart can not be. At a
newsstand one can guess the character Of
4 man by the kind of pictorial he pur.
chases. When the devil fails to get man
to read a bad book, he sometimes succeeds
In getting him TO look at bad picture.
When Satan goes a.tishing he does not
care whether 1t is long line or short
line, if he o@ly draws his victim in Be.
ware of lascivious pictorials, young man,
in the name of Almighty God l charge
you.
If I have this morning successfully laid
down any principles by which you may
judge in regard to books and newspapers,
then | have done something which l shall
not be ashamed of on the day which shall
thy every mans work, of what sort it is.
Cherish good books and newspapers.
Beware of the bad ones. The column
may save your soul; one paragraph may
ruin it. Benjamin Franklin said that the
reading of Cotton Mather's essay on do
4 Id 20 In
assassin of Lord Russell declared that he
was led into crime by reading one vivid
romance. The consecrated John Angel
James, than whom England never pro-
duced a better man, declared in his
old days that he had never yet got over
the evil effects of having for fifteen min
utes once read Il bad book. But l need
not 90 so far off. l could come near home
and tell you of something that occurred in
my college days. | could tell you of a
comrIde that was great hearted, noble
and generous. He was studying for an
honorable profession, but he had an in
fdel book in his trunk, and he said to me
one day:
ODE Witt, would you like to read itr'
l said: Yes, | would" l took the
book and read it only for few minutes
was really startled with what l saw
there, ana / handed the book back to him
and said:
''You had better destroy that book"
No, he kept it, He read it. He re-read
IT. After awhile he gave up religion as a
myth. He gave up God as nonenity.
He gave up the Bible as a fable. He gave
up the Church of Christ as u useless in.
stitution. He gave up good morals as be-
ing unnecessarily stringent. have heard
Of him but twice in many years The
time before the last l heard of hun he was
a confirmed inebriate. TIE last heard
of him he was coming out of an insane
asylum-in body, mind and soul an awful
wreck. | believe that one intdel book
killed him for two worlds.
Go home to-day and look through your
library, and then, having looked through
your library, look on the stand where you
keen your pictorials and newspapers, and
apply the Christian principles l have laid
down this morning. If there is any thing
in your homo that can not stand the test,
do not give it away, for it might spoil an
immortal soul; do not sell it, for
the money you get would be the
price of blood; but rather kndlc
:. fire on your kitchen hearth, or in your
back yard and then drop the poison in it,
and keep stirrin" the blaze until from
preface to appendix there shall not be a
single paragraph left and the bonfire in
Boooklyn shall be as consuming as that
one in the streets of Ephesus.
"AYenge Not Yourselves"
An FaS+o-n story tells of the naughty